Service Clubs Put Out Welcome Mat For Women

Mary Ann Dean said she never thought about joining the Rotary Club of Orlando until the group asked her this year to become one of its first women members. Her first reaction was to say no.

''I don't have the time to get involved in another club,'' she told Carl Stallard, the club's membership chairman.

Stallard, however, convinced Dean that she should join the club because it was aggressively seeking a number of women with her leadership qualities.

Dean, general manager of the Civic Theatre of Central Florida, said she does not see herself as breaking new ground for the women's movement and wants to be treated like any other member. She will be inducted this spring.

''I have no militant ax to grind,'' said Dean, whose father was a Rotary club president. ''It never even occurred to me.''

For 82 years, the clubhouse doors at Rotary International and other service groups opened only to men. That changed last summer when the organizations, on the heels of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, decided to accept women members. The court ruled in May that service groups cannot prohibit women from joining.

Since then, the ranks of women in service clubs dominated by men has increased, but slowly, because most of the nation's clubs have not made special efforts to bring women into the fold.

Rotary Club of Orlando, Central Florida's oldest chapter, has taken a slightly different tack.

Members of the Orlando club, which was founded nearly 68 years ago, have been actively seeking women members since the fall. The effort appears to be paying off. By May, the club will have inducted about a dozen women, including Dean.

''Instead of waiting for this to happen in a passive way, we decided to go out and get them,'' Stallard said. ''We have gone after this.''

The club decided to seek a group of women members, instead of bringing in one or two women, to avoid an appearance of tokenism and to make women members feel accepted, said Henry Swanson, the club's historian, who has been a member for 30 years. Swanson said he has heard few complaints from members about women being admitted.

''They accept the women,'' he said. ''There's no hard feelings that I've picked up on with any of the members.''

Rotary was not the only service organization to drop its men-only requirement last year. Kiwanis International and Lions Club International started allowing women in July 1987; Jaycees International began admitting women in 1984 after losing a court battle.

About 5,000 women have joined the 315,000-member Kiwanis, and about 7,000 women have joined the Lions Clubs, which has 1.3 million members worldwide. The Jaycees organization does not keep track of its membership nationally by sex, said Beryl Saibu, a spokeswoman for 400,000-member group.

Nationwide, women account for less than 2 percent of Rotary's 385,000 membership. Internationally, the organization has more than 1 million members. In Rotary districts 698 and 697, which include Orange, Seminole, Osceola, Lake, Brevard and Volusia counties and represent 99 chapters, the percentage is less than 1 percent -- about 25 of the 3,300 Rotarians are women.

So far, opening the doors to women has not had a major impact on Rotary's membership growth in the United States, said Mims Neal, a spokeswoman for Rotary International at its headquarters in Evanston, Ill. The number of women Rotarians has increased by about 175 a week since October, she said. Rotary Club of Orlando plans to increase its membership from about 215 now to 250 by the end of June, with about half of the new members being women.

Jeff Clark, president of the Rotary Club of College Park, said the service organization had not kept pace with changes in the workplace, where increasing numbers of women are holding decision-making positions. Now the clubs will play catch-up. To become a Rotarian, a person must be invited to join and must hold a managerial position.

The College Park club has three women among its 50 members but has not made any organized effort to recruit women, Clark said. Other Rotary clubs in Central Florida with women members include Casselberry, Longwood, Dr. Phillips and Lake Buena Vista, Neal said.

Two women who joined the College Park Rotary earlier this month said they have felt welcomed by the club's members, though the male members still are adjusting to the change and make an occasional slip of the tongue.

Patti Mildner, branch manager of The First F.A. in College Park, said she has not heard any grumbling among members. ''If they're doing it, I haven't heard it,'' she said. ''A lot of men have come up to me and said, 'We're glad you could join.' ''

Another service organization in Orlando has done just the opposite of Rotary and recruited men as members.

The Futura Chapter of the American Business Women's Association, which decided to accept men in October after a judge in Oklahoma threatened to sue if he could not join, will induct the organization's first male members on April 5. The ABWA's national membership of 100,000 included 75 men.

Orange County Tax Collector Earl Wood and real estate broker Dewey Pfeiffer will become the first ABWA members in Central Florida, said Joan Evans, publicity chairwoman of the Orlando chapter. ''I told them they're just one of the girls.''